Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Economics In Transition: Issues Applicable To Climate Change, Odysseus Bostick

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents three essays on topics that characterize the challenges of the energy transition. The first two focus on mitigating the worst impacts of climate change while the final hones in on adapting to climate change.

The first essay estimates willingness-to-pay (WTP) of electricity customers for rooftop solar within the Tennessee Valley Authority. Applying a conditional logit model, the probability of adoption rises with utility rates and emissions-reductions and declines with costs. Evidence of social contagion exists with adoption probabilities increasing 55 − 57% when respondents know someone with panels. WTP also rises. Comparing aggregated to regional WTPs confirms …

Essays In Microeconomics, Michael Charysh

Doctoral Dissertations

\chapter*{Abstract}\label{ch:abstract} The first chapter evaluates the effect of the passage of the Campus Save Act (as part of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization in 2013) on reported incidents of crime on college campuses in the United States. This piece of legislation required colleges and universities to provide sexual assault awareness training and preventive education programs for all new students, faculty, and staff. I collect survey data from colleges and universities on their historical training efforts and available resources from 2010 to 2020. While previous studies have examined the relationship between sexual violence and future earnings or labor market …

The Impact Of Guaranteed Income On Political Participation, Daniel Horn

Doctoral Dissertations

This three-paper dissertation examines the impact of guaranteed income (GI) and cash transfer (CT) programs on political participation, aiming to contribute to understanding how social policies can shape civic engagement. The first paper provides a comprehensive literature review on GI and CT programs, focusing on their potential effects on political participation. By analyzing existing studies, this paper identifies key findings and gaps in the literature, setting the stage for further empirical investigation. The second paper develops and tests a new instrument called the Brief Political Participation Scale (BPPS), designed to measure political participation concisely and reliably. The third paper presents …

Greenwashing “Brown Gold”: A Critical Analysis Of Anaerobic Digesters And California’S Neoliberal Environmental Programs In Wisconsin’S Dairyland, Sarah Emily D'Onofrio

Doctoral Dissertations

Large dairy farms, also known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), have turned to anaerobic digesters as the industry is increasingly pressured to find ways to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. Digesters are machines that turn animal waste from CAFOs into electricity and fuel which are then sold as “credits” in California’s market based climate change mitigation programs such as cap and trade and the low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) program. However, this dissertation not only challenges the assertion that digesters are “green,” but also that these programs are doing what they claim to do in a deregulated and re-regulated …

Three Essays In Experimental And Behavioral Economics, Vasudha Chopra

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents three essays that use experimental economics methods. The first essay examines how behavior in inter-group contests is altered when players have incomplete information on their opponent. The game is a Tullock contest with heterogeneous groups (differences in cost-of-effort, prize value, and group-size), and players only know the probability their opponent is a particular type. For cost and value treatments, incomplete information increases effort in uneven contests but has no effect in even contests. Group-level effort is higher in group-size treatments, but incomplete information does not systematically alter effort. Overall, group-level effort is much higher than what standard …

Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Bokseong Jeong

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three essays in applied microeconomics, each studying the behavioral response to incentives and regulations. The first chapter tests whether weakening criminal sanctions based on the use of violence effectively reduces the severity of a criminal act. In 2013, the United States Department of Justice reduced sentence years for drug criminals who do not possess weapons. Regression Discontinuity Design estimates of the probability of weapon possession of drug offenders show an 11-percentage point reduction in Florida's border counties. The second chapter estimates the impact of the refugee influx in Germany on recorded crimes by the immigration …

Three Essays In Experimental And Network Economics, John D. Mcmahan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of the three essays in network and experimental economics. The first essay explores the importance of endogenous bilateral connections and punishment networks in public good settings. I conduct a laboratory experiment that varies the incentive to form links among participants in a traditional Voluntary Contribution Mechanism game. I find that when link benefits are zero very few connections are formed, and very little punishment takes place. When link benefits are positive many links are formed and cooperation levels are increased. In general, we find evidence that participants strategically use the bilateral linking process to avoid punishment and …

Cross-National Variation In Women’S Rights: Europe And Civil War, Nourah Shuaibi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on Women’s Social, Economic and Political rights in post-Conflict countries. In order to evaluate the relationship with sound causal logic, I set out to study multiple relationships to understand the impact of the variables in question. Looking at the nature of the relationship required an evaluation in 3 ways, which culminated in the writing of 4 separate chapters. Chapter 2 demonstrates the importance of understanding Women’s Rights and their role in economic development and peace building. This places women’s rights in context to set the scene for the rest of …

Three Essays On The Economics Of Health And Higher Education In The United States, Hieu M. Nguyen

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a collection of three essays in applied microeconomics. In the first essay, I study the enrollment effects of Tennessee Promise, a state-funded financial aid program in the two-year college sector. I document a substantial response in full-time first-time enrollment and some degree of substitutability between the unsubsidized and subsidized college sectors following the inception of the Tennessee Promise program. The second essay takes initial steps to examine the broader implications of free college. I first use institution-level data to construct three metrics of diversity, namely the share of underrepresented minorities in the student body, Simpson’s index, and …

Essays On Financial Frictions, Shipping Frequency And Exchange Rate Pass-Through, Md Deluair Hossen

Doctoral Dissertations

In three chapters of this dissertation, I examine financing frictions, shipping frequency, and exchange rate pass-through.

In the first chapter, I develop a model of importer-exporter procurement where the importer is procuring international inputs from the exporting firms located in developing countries. The exporters are credit constrained for working capital, incur the per-shipment fixed costs, and get paid after goods delivered to the importer. The model shows that for high financing costs in origin and destination, the shipping frequency increases. Furthermore, longer delivery times increase shipping frequency as well as procurement costs. The model also shows that the higher per-shipment …

Three Chapters On Environmental Regulation, Pollution, And Trade Liberalization, Tingsi Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation consists of three chapters in environmental economics and international trade. The first chapter identifies the effects of environmental regulation on Chinese manufacturing firms' markups. Difference-in-difference and triple-differenced estimates show that more stringent environmental regulation decreases firms' markups. Furthermore, environmental regulation has a significant impact on non-exporters' markups, but it has no impact on exporters. Examining pre-trends, we find that SOEs did not change their behavior in anticipation of environmental regulation, but non-SOEs started to adjust before the regulation was implemented. The second chapter evaluates how the market size affects the impact of environmental stringency on firms' economic activity. …

Three Essays On Behavioral Economics And Mechanism Design, Na Zuo

Doctoral Dissertations

My three essays on behavioral economics and mechanism design introduce two new microeconomic theoretical models.

In the first chapter, we develop an n-player theoretical model applying the concept of Virtual Bargaining to study cooperative behavior in public goods games characterizing team production. Virtual Bargaining is a modeling framework that characterizes how players may construct a tacit agreement to coordinate behavior in the absence of explicit communication. Players identify their worst-possible payoff outcome from any candidate agreement, and mutually best-respond with respect to maximization of their worst-payoff function. Players face uncertainties regarding whether other players will follow through on a candidate …

Three Essays In Public Finance, Md Sabbirul Haque

Doctoral Dissertations

The first chapter examines the long-run and short-run elasticity of income with respect to changes in tax rates. The Elasticity of Taxable Income (ETI) is a largely-debated parameter in both research and policy. Despite the growing importance of ETI, the literature has not fully considered the intertemporal impacts of taxation. I expand the literature by estimating short-run and long-run impacts of tax rate changes relying on the most recent estimation method and using appropriate lagged values of income when constructing the predicted net-of-tax rate instruments. The short-run ETI in the baseline specification is 0.69 whereas estimates for the Elasticity of …

Essays On Decision Making Under Risk And Uncertainty, Dong Yan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses economic theory, in tandem with experiments and other empirical methods, to better understand the role of information – for instance, missing information, conflicting information, and information overload – in determining outcomes in decision settings characterized by risk and uncertainty. In my first chapter, I use theory and experiments to compare market outcomes in a setting where the seller has better information on product quality than the buyer, and examine the effects of introducing a third-party who can credibly relay information on product quality. Under a range of conditions, I find market efficiency is higher when the information …

Essays In Behavioral Economics, Jing Li

Doctoral Dissertations

In chapter one, I propose a model consolidating the norm- and preferences-based approaches to explain laboratory bargaining outcomes. Social norms are identified by the axioms of cooperative bargaining theory, and other-regarding preferences are captured using Fehr and Schmidt's inequity aversion utility function. The model applies to bargaining situations where other-regarding agents abide by social norms in their decision-making. Preferences and norms interact to determine bargaining outcomes, and their interaction undermines the recoverability of the other-regarding preference parameters based on observations from the lab.

In chapter two, I employ a lab experiment to study whether men receive lucrative tasks more often …

Essays In Applied Health Economics, Bongkyun Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

I study how change in environmental factors and information provision about environmental risk effect on human capitals and individuals' behavior.

Psychological maternal stress is thought to be a factor in poor infant health, but direct evidence is difficult to obtain. In first chapter, we posit that the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, California provides a natural test of the effect of mothers' stress on infants' birth weight and gestation. The Northridge disaster featured a low rate of injury and a quick recovery, but long-lasting and well documented consequences for mental health. Difference-in-difference results show that infants born closest to …

Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Bilal Celik

Doctoral Dissertations

First chapter studies the impacts of large natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and storms have on economic activity by using nighttime light intensity data. On a local level, using the data of three large earthquakes within a 200-mile radius from the earthquake’s epicenter, I found that when the distance from the epicenter increases, the nighttime light intensity decreases. By using the synthetic control approach, on a national level, I found that while three of nine large natural disasters have a positive impact on economic activity, one natural disaster has a negative impact. When aggregating all nine large natural disasters, …

Excessive Acquisition: What Is It? What Makes It Happen?, Melanie Doss

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study draws on the philosophical concept of hermeneutics and theories of the self and self-regulation to investigate the underlying meanings expressed and experienced by the self and the other in the behavior of excessive acquisition. In accordance with the methods outlined by the phenomenological and grounded theory traditions, data were collected from 15 persons afflicted with excessive acquisition, defined as the self and 12 persons afflicted by excessive acquisition, defined as the other. The data content collected from in-depth interviews, field notes, observations, and electronic messages formulated the emergent Parent Themes of Emotion, Space, Economics, and Time. …

Analysis Of A Market For Tradable Credits, Policy Uncertainty Effects On Investment Decisions, And The Potential To Supply A Renewable Aviation Fuel Industry With An Experimental Industrial Oilseed, Evan Lawrence Markel

Doctoral Dissertations

This research is aligned with identifying barriers throughout the alternative jet-fuel supply chain. Prices are analyzed in the market for tradable credits known as renewable identification numbers (RINs). The RIN market is a key policy instrument used in the implementation of the renewable fuel standard (RFS). The program is highly complex and drivers of RIN price are not always clear. RIN prices also exhibit multiple regimes where the price of nested RINs converge. Therefore, a smooth transition autoregressive model is employed to examine drivers of RIN price and to identify drivers of price regime change. Through research in the RIN …

Economic Forecasting With Many Predictors, Fanning Meng

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation is focused on the analysis of economic forecasting with a large number of predictors.

The first chapter develops a novel forecasting method that minimizes the effects of weak predictors and estimation errors on the accuracy of equity premium forecasts. The proposed method is based on an averaging scheme applied to quantiles conditional on predictors selected by LASSO. The resulting forecasts outperform the historical average, and other existing models, by statistically and economically meaningful margins.

In the second chapter, we find that incorporating distributional and high-frequency information into a forecasting model can produce substantial accuracy gains. Distributional information is …

Factors Influencing Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Land Use, Land-Use Change, And Forest Activities, Pattarawan Watcharaanantapong

Doctoral Dissertations

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a major global issue because of their effects on climate and the resulting environmental and human impacts. The primary greenhouse gases (GHGs), carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O), are emitted into the atmosphere from a myriad of human activities such as energy supply, manufacturing, transportation, commercial and residential buildings, and waste. Additionally, management activities on agricultural and forest lands can influence GHG emissions substantially. Even though GHGs can be released into the air via the sectors mentioned, GHGs, especially CO₂, can be removed from …

Essays On Environmental Policy Instruments, Emissions Leakage And Public Policy, Shreekar Pradhan

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays related to my research on environmental policy, emissions leakage, and public policy. In the first essay, I address how open economies respond to environmental policy instruments under uncertainty. I develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for a small open economy (SOE) and evaluate the macroeconomic fluctuations in response to cap-and-trade, pollution tax, and emissions intensity standard under two shocks: productivity and terms of trade. My findings suggest that cap-and-trade policies are most effective in dampening the macroeconomic volatility from productivity shock. However, under the terms-of-trade shock, pollution tax, and intensity target policies are …

Essays In Policy Analysis, Michael Philip Craig

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation consists of three essays related to policy analysis. In the first essay we ask, how can developing nations who face revenue mobilization issues and large informal sectors use taxation as a means of nation building? To answer this, we design a dynamic general equilibrium model that accounts for a large informal sector. Contrary to previous studies that model the informal economy, we focus on the importance of the government maintaining its social fiscal contract with its constituents by including the provision of productive public goods in the model. By doing so, we show that increasing taxes can be …

The Environmental Effects Of Trade And Environmental Policy Within And Across Sectors, Lawrence Dale Laplue Iii

Doctoral Dissertations

In the first chapter of this dissertation I analyze how establishment-level choices and dynamics affect aggregate emissions outcomes. To do this I first decompose aggregate emissions into three channels: scale or country size, composition or sector market share, and aggregate technique or emissions intensity. I then extend the decomposition to show how the aggregate technique channel is driven by four establishment-level channels: entry, exit, reallocation of resources between survivors, and within-establishment adjustment of production techniques and emissions intensity. Using establishment-level emissions data and a unique empirical exercise I first show, empirically, how the relative importance of the composition and aggregate …

Essays In Applied Economics: Applications Of Transformed Ordinal Quantile Regression, Okila R. Elboeva

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays on the application of Transformed Ordinal Quantile Regression (TORQUE) developed by Hong and He (2010). TORQUE is based on jittered response, a nonparametric link function, a semiparametric quantile estimation. When the response variable is categorical an application of the standard quantile regression is not optimal. TORQUE technique generalizes ordinary quantile regression, and as a semiparametric method it is more robust than Maximum Likelihood Estimators.

In the first essay I estimate conditional quantiles of happiness using the data from British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for 2006. I find the continuity assumption of happiness ranking does …

Does Political Giving Impact Shareholder Wealth? Evidence From State Campaign Finance Reforms, Douglas Brian Blank Ii

Doctoral Dissertations

Does corporate political giving actually affect shareholder wealth? While firms value political participation, some lawmakers oppose corporate involvement in politics. Yet, the existing literature has established a correlation between campaign finance and corporate outcomes without fully documenting a causal relation. I use an innovative database of political giving to exploit changes in state campaign finance laws as an exogenous shock to political giving. Specifically, I use the staggered adoption of externally imposed legal limits to political giving across U.S. states to expose how shareholder wealth responds. I find shareholder wealth declines following legally imposed reductions in political giving. The causal …

Incentive Based Residential Demand Aggregation, Qinran Hu

Doctoral Dissertations

From the beginning of the twenty-first century, the electrical power industry has moved from traditional power systems toward smart grids. However, with the increasing amount of renewable energy resources integrated into the grid, there is a significant challenge in power system operation due to the intermittency and variability of the renewables. Therefore, the utilization of flexible and controllable demand-side resources to maintain power system efficiency and stability has become a fundamental goal of smart grid initiatives.

Meanwhile, due to the development of communication and sensing technologies, intelligent demand-side management with automatic controls enables residential loads to participate in demand response …

Essays On Energy Efficiency And Pricing Behavior In The U.S. Automobile Market: Evidence From Hybrid Electric Vehicles, Sangsoo Park

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays on the energy efficiency and pricing behavior of firms in the U.S. automobile market with a focus on Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs).

The first essay analyzes the market share of HEVs and evaluates consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for future fuel cost savings by purchasing fuel efficient HEVs. Estimates of consumers' WTP for future fuel cost savings and the finding of an implicit discount rate of 8.35%~14.35% suggest that consumers undervalue future fuel cost savings from purchasing HEVs, and that consumers want a return on their investment on fuel cost saving HEV technology in …

The Effects Of Trade Competition On Health, And Determinants Of Workplace Behavior, Thomas Clayton Mcmanus

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation consists of three essays related to workplace behavior. In the first paper, we design a controlled laboratory experiment to study image motives in a setting where decisions signal intelligence. The experiment results show that in some settings social scrutiny can discourage individuals from making choices that signal their intelligence, despite evidence that the signal was privately valuable. In the second paper, we study the effect of Chinese import competition on occupational safety and health at US manufacturers. We find that a change in US trade policy and Chinese import shocks significantly increases worker injury and illness rates in …

Economic Wealth And Social Welfare: A Longitudinal Analysis Of Transnational Well-Being, Kelly Brooke Martin

Doctoral Dissertations

Macro changes in the financial arena have prompted ongoing research focused on global economic trends. As America emerges from an era of stagnant wages, rising unemployment, and growing class stratification it is necessary to explore differences in cross-national socioeconomic behavior to address the changing needs of our country. Many studies attempt to describe statistical correlations between economic wealth and social well-being domestically and abroad by utilizing methodological perspectives that do not account for longitudinal change. To address the gap in existing research, this study seeks to measure variations in econometric indicators between the U.S. and Nordic countries to further explicate …